The year was 1945. Through a radio in the corner, Doris Day cooed the lyrics to Sentimental Journey. Blades of a fan twirled lazily in the summer air and the light of a dying afternoon slipped amber-yellow through the window shades. The air smelled of oak and whisky, tobacco and perfume.

It was all a bit of strange juxtaposition, considering the blood spewing from the crown of a man’s head as he toppled from his bar stool onto the slatted floor. Madeleine stood over him, a silver key swinging from her neck and a broken bottle in her hand. The lines up the backside of her pantyhose were crooked and perspiration stuck strands of hair to her neck. “That’s what you get for not calling.”

She crouched next to him and raised her cigarette over the wound for the sole purpose of ashing it at the first opportunity. “And that… is for sticking your Johnson in my roommate,” she hissed.

People were staring. Strike that, men were staring, regulars she knew from the bar, each of them with their own string of conquests. She wiped her forehead and yelled, “What?!”

A row of hats slowly pivoted back to the bar.

The memory of that moment – and all those faces – was as fresh today as it had been in 1945. So when Maddy saw the profile sitting at the bar, she stopped throwing darts and elbowed her way through a crowd of drunk people shouting at the Celtics game. “Hey! Hey, you!”

Whistler had so become a fixture at the university library, students had started approaching him for reference information.

UNLV's Special Collections housed unique, rare, and specialized research material that documented the history, culture and physical environment of the city of Las Vegas, the Southern Nevada region, the gaming industry, and the University of Nevada Las Vegas.The collections included books, pamphlets, posters, serials and periodicals, scrapbooks, archives and manuscripts, maps, architectural drawings, photographs, and more recently, video and audio tapes.

Everything he needed about the history of Searchlight, the boomtown years, the historic landscape, prominent citizens. And, after days of searching, the Agent finally found the real treasure map he'd sought: a map of the town before it's decline in the nineteen forties.

His finger traced the streets that led to the (former) Catholic Church. "Here's the church, and here's the steeple. Open the doors..."

He'd snuck the kid's menu from the stack while he waited to be seated. Once in the booth, the Agent flipped over the copy of the Junior Short Stack to discover Gypsy Girl, number twenty-two in the series. Whistler tucked it underneath his placemat, a mental note to take it home later. Three more and he'd have the whole Denny's set. A day would come when someone would pay good money for them.

He always planned for the future.

A blonde waitress brought his coffee and a full carafe. Membership had its privileges.

He picked up the menu and studied the all-day breakfast. It felt like a Grand Slam kind of day in Sin City.

A slayer slept heavily. At times exhaustion was the culprit, but deep slumber was also the conduit for dreams, and all slayers did so in dark and vivid ways. One nighttime vision might serve a prophetic purpose, while another might be an exercise in improvisation, or a release of emotions kept close to the heart. Tonight, Rhiannon’s dream was something else entirely.

It was a conversation between souls, long acquainted with one another. Past incarnations of selves, alternate selves, selves yet to come – All three.

Rhiannon became aware of it as her feet traveled – one-two-three, one-two-three – in a waltz across a vast room. Windows stretched from ceiling to floor. The world beyond the glass was wintry white.

“I knew you seemed familiar.” Her fingers curled in his coat collar.

White tie, black jacket with tails. The pants properly hemmed, cuffs residing just over shined, black shoes. As far from his normal attire as could be imagined. But the hat was there; the hat was always there. It was one of two constants in his universe.

It was just past dusk, and The Blob was about to ooze itself across the outdoor screen. He'd hooked the speaker inside-out on the Impala's driver-side window, so the audio would project outward. He rested against the windshield, shoes off so as to not scuff the new paint on the hood. It'd cost him enough to get out of the impound and repaired. He wasn't about to cause any more damage.

A cooler full of beer sat on the roof of the car, an open can to his right. A jumbo bag of popcorn rested on his lap.

This took him back. The Globe in England; the Colliseum in Rome; watching Oedipus Rex in the original Greek. But nothing compared to a good old-fashioned drive-in theater.

The sharp end of a dart whizzed through the air until it sunk solidly into cork. The quill vibrated in place. "Bullseye!" proclaimed its drunken thrower as he threw his hands in the air. Victory was his, assuming that darts were meant to hit a 'For Sale or Rent' board posted two feet from the game board. Daniel lumbered over and pulled the point from an ad for a 1976 Chevrolet with 40,000 miles on the odometer.

Hey... not a bad looking car.

Blindly, he moved to stab it into the correct spot. The air alongside his ear whistled. Thud. There was stinging pain in his right hand. "Ah! Son of a bitch!" He pulled the dart from the soft flesh between his knuckles. "You meant ta do that!" he accused an unknown assailant.

The paper-thin walls provided twenty-four entertainment; while he'd suspected Blair was a bit loose, her Facts of Life were projected in high-octave screams of pleasure, and Mister Drummond was a horrendous, abusive drunk.

If his bosses expected him to set up shop in the desert again, the least they could do was point him towards decent place to live. Which, in Searchlight standards, was a double-wide trailer on a dusty road on the outskirts of town.

It had a pinsize hole in the floor in the north corner, and one of the windows was a piece of plastic and masking tape, but it was quiet. All he needed to figure out was where the smell was coming from.

A final sweep of the hotel room produced a missing pair of boxers. He didn't relish the thought that Blair had been snooping through his things. He'd dropped off the key, and walked back out to the Impala.

The car windows were down, wind kicking up her hair. Her fingers tapped the steering wheel in time to the music pumping out of the radio. Holly sang along to Blondie's "Heart of Glass", humming when she didn't know the lyrics.

The brunette was in a good mood. She could really only attribute it to one thing, and when she thought about it, she smiled to herself. She caught sight of it in the rearview mirror.

"I look like a bellend."

She glanced over to the side of the road. The air was hazy with heat, doing that funny wavering thing. Then she saw him, and nearly slammed on her brakes.

"No fucking way." Her smile widening, she slowed up on the accelerator and turned the music down.

"Hey, sexy!," Holly called. "Show me some leg, and I might give you a ride."

Rhiannon slammed the door and hauled her possessions onto her shoulder. A backpack and duffel: that was all she owned in the world, other than her beat-up, ‘new to her’ car… which wouldn’t start. Probably the battery. No telling when it had been replaced and such extreme temperatures were notoriously bad for them. It was an easy fix, but she wanted out of the motel now and she was prepared to leave the car behind – at last temporarily – to accomplish it because the seedy, perspiring manager of the Kay told her that an older woman asked about her. Sure, he’d be happy to tell Rhiannon the other details of the conversation, for a price.

Well, screw that and screw him. She’d be using a fake ID the next time she checked into a motel.

She tromped the length of the sheltered corridor and into the parking lot, past her traitorous car, to the highway that stretched from Searchlight to Las Vegas. It was a trucking route, so her chances of getting picked up as a hitchhiker were good. She began the walk towards the orange-ish haze of light pollution in the distance.

"She's a beauty, this one. Only driven on Sundays by a little old lady. All original parts."

Whistler wasn't listening. He could tell the used car dealer was lying. The car had been put through its paces. But the black Impala called to him. Leather seats, V6 engine. He kicked the tires. The car wanted to kick back. Not literally. But the intent was there. And that he could appreciate.

"Knock off three hundred and I'll drive it off the lot." Whistler could bargain with the best of them. It helped when he could persuade the weaker minded to listen to him.

"I'll make it three fifty."

"That's what I like to hear."

The portly man trundled off to the trailer to get the paperwork.

Since landing in Vegas, the Agent could feel a pull. His instincts to fly back to the States, to go to Searchlight despite his protestations, were on the money.

Whistler opened the door and slid into the driver's seat. He fumbled with the AM radio, ran his hand over the dashboard, and then adjusted the rearview mirror.

The face looking back at him wasn't his own.

It was female, And it wasn't Holly's.

The girl was brunette, brown eyes. She had specks of blood on her chin.

As musicals went, it... was a musical. In the dirtiest sense of the word.

Not in the 'it's a bawdy farce with nekkid ladies! dear gentlefolk,' kind of way. Certainly not in the double-endendre 'quick, through the back door... if you get my meaning' style restoration comedy.

It was dirty because everyone who visited the theater dragged dust its doors, and no amount of sweeping kept it at bay. The actors coughed between notes; the audience coughed when there were supposed to be a laugh.

Then again, it wasn't the brightest idea to bring in a show that revolves around a factory girl who falls in love to the heir of a soap factory, to a town whose inhabitants didn't fully care for the concept of cleanliness.

"When you want a cake of soap to finish off your toilet, we're the folks who boil it."

The offending lyrics forced Whistler out of his seat and through the back curtains. He stormed across the small entrance way, and into the chill December air. He sat on the wooden stoop, produced a small bag of tobacco and rolling paper.

He loved the invention of cigarettes. Wished he could have been there when it was explained to the British. Such a stuffy lot, the Brits. And full of themselves. He suspected they were still sore over losing America. Which is where he was now. Rolling a cigarette under the starry sky above Searchlight, Nevada.

Without the first clue as to why.

He'd been drawn to this town six years ago. It spoke to his blood, seemed to reach out and touch him. A siren call that he couldn't ignore. It wasn't unfamiliar to him, to be drawn to a person or place. To nudge destiny, as he liked to think of it. Push one domino, and the others would fall.

Or stamp a boot in the middle to make sure they don't.

That was his job; no, his penance. Because mom and dad were from warring families (you're welcome for that story, Bill), and he was the bastard little offspring everyone wanted dead until someone got the bright idea to make him work for his existence. And by work, keep the balance. Don't let the scales tip too far in one direction. Whether that means pulling a pram away from a stampeding horse, or pushing it into its path.

He was drawn here. Whistler just couldn't figure out why. He was on his way to California to check on a rumor of a dormant Hellmouth. But, he reasoned, as long as no one built anything over top of it, it should remain inactive.

The troubling bit was, every time he thought about leaving, he didn't.

And there were others. Whistler had seen them, just on the edge of shadows. Not just the occasional vampire, but other things. All unsure of what attracted them to this mining town on the verge of decline.

The man saw futures. Not all at once, that would drive anyone suicidal (and they weren't big on that, not on either side of the fence). He could focus on someone, and see their potential. He could read rudimentary magic and feel the aura of magical objects (but not their design).

(He also had a few extra tricks up his sleeve, but those weren't important now.)

The thing about Searchlight was, once he'd stepped inside the city limits, it all went blank. More of a white noise, actually. It proved almost impossible to pierce through the veil. After a year, he'd managed to block out the scritching behind his ears. By the third year, he could properly cheat at cards and convince the person who lost to buy him a shot of whiskey.

Today he could foretell old Sam Maxwell was going to die. And it was going to be bloody. From the hazy visions, it was to be a chupacabra attack. Sam would, as he always did, get red in the face with cheap whiskey, wander to the Potter homestead (with whom he had a running feud), and piss on the property line. Before Maxwell got a chance to shake it off, he'd be dragged into nearby scruff and torn apart.

It'd be blamed on wolves, just like the others.

This was the hard part, deciding whether or not he should act. One one hand, Maxwell was a stinking drunk who'd eventually kill himself with alcohol. He didn't contribute much to the town aside from the occasional laughter. It would free up a room above the saloon, and fuck knows Whistler was cramped in his current living quarters.

But it'd be another death, adding to the rumors of a curse that threatened the town. It would add to the eventual critical mass of building hysteria, with townsfolk taking up a lynch mob mentality if the sheriff refused to intervene. They would blame <i>someone</i> and wouldn't stop until they hung by the end of a noose.

And that neck could be his, just as much as another. He couldn't see the domino effect of either outcome.

"Fuck me."

Whistler pushed up the brim of his bowler hat and trotted over to the bar, in time to intercept Maxwell as he stumbled out the door.

"Not tonight, Sam. Better you take to your bed, ya?"

* The Sunshine Girl made its premiere at the Gaiety Theatre in London, on February 24, 1912.

Holly didn’t understand the usefulness of this event. Okay, so it was for her dad’s friends and family to gather and pay respect to him, or something along those lines. Except he didn’t have very many friends, and his family were so fragmented and disjointed, many hadn’t been invited out of sheer forgetfulness. She picked up the slightly grimy mug that sat in front of her, and took a bitter sip.

Gregory Pirner had been a secretive, mysterious man. Despite having been the one to name her, he hadn’t spent a lot of time being a focal point in her life. After her parents’ divorce, he fucked off to London and became an insufferable workaholic. She didn’t get close to him again until she went off to university.

Now here she was, at his makeshift memorial. It was being held at a pub that had the audacity to call itself a restaurant. A soggy salad and chips didn’t constitute a restaurant, in Holly’s mind.